What I Am Reading Today

From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Caroline Overington comes another thought-provoking and heart-rending story, that reaches from the heart of Bondi to a small village in Tanzania. Shortly after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi’s newest shopping complex. He’s wearing a dark grey hoodie and a bomb around his neck. Just a few minutes later he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders. For police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Senior Sergeant Boehm, it’s a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word. The seconds tick by for the five in the shop: Mitchell, the talented schoolboy; Mouse, the shop assistant; Kimmi, the nail-bar technician; and Roger Callaghan, the real estate agent whose reason for being in Bondi that day is far from innocent. And of course there’s Ali Khan. Is he the embodiment of evil, as the villagers in his Tanzanian birthplace believe? Or just an innocent boy, betrayed at every turn, who just wants a place to call home?

What I Plan To Read This Week

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

At the age of eighteen, Julia Jones left her hometown — the small beachside town of Middle Point — with a head full of grand plans. Plans for an exciting life in a town that didn’t involve a main street with one pub or a particular boy named Ryan Blackburn. But after fifteen years and a lifetime later, Julia’s forced to put her career and big-city life on hold when she returns home to finalise her mother’s estate. Which is exactly where she runs smack-bang into the town’s hero, Ry. As in Ryan Blackburn. The sensible thing to do? Stay the hell away from him and head back to Melbourne as fast as her stilettos can carry her! But instead, Julia finds his offer of a helping hand and a hot body too delicious to refuse. Soon, Julia’s ignoring her better judgement and diving into an ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow’ fling with Ry. But what she doesn’t realise is that tomorrow has a way of sneaking up on you…and that saying goodbye to her home town — and to Ry — is so much harder the second time around.

A late-bloomer’s coming-of-age tale filled with lovable and unforgettable personalities, Walking on Trampolines is an irresistible and hilarious journey through friendship, first love, family ties and who you can become if you’re brave enough. Tallulah ‘Lulu’ de Longland is a pretty normal teenager – except for the secret language she shares with her quirky best friend, Annabelle Andrews, and having a mother who gives names to the dresses she wears. When she meets Joshua Keaton at age sixteen and falls in love, there’s nothing to indicate she’s heading for the ultimate betrayal. Six years later, she finds herself alone, stuck in her small home town and doing book-keeping for her father’s plumbing business. Not so much seizing the moment, as clawing it back from the past, she ups and moves to the city. It turns out she makes a great personal assistant to radio star, Duncan McAllister, and starts seeing the nice, but perhaps a little dull, Ben Morton. But when the past and the future collide, perpetual good girl Lulu is forced to make a decision: remain the ever-dependable one who gets walked all over, or do something unexpected and maybe even unforgivable?

Resistance to the Pod Leadership has come apart. The Grove has been destroyed but so has the Pod Minister. Quinn, Bea and Alina separately must embark on a perilous journey across the planet’s dead landscape in search of the rumoured resistance base Sequoia. Meanwhile the Pod Minister has been succeeded by his capricious daughter. Her brother, Ronan, is supposed to advise her, but his doubts about the regime lead to him being sent out of the Pod in search of Quinn. In a world in which the human race is adapting to survive with little air, the stakes are high.

Marta and Hector have been married for a long time. Through the good and bad; through raising a son and sending him off to life after university. So long, in fact, that Marta finds it difficult to remember her life before Hector. He has always taken care of her, and she has always done everything she can to be a good wife—as advised by a dog-eared manual given to her by Hector’s aloof mother on their wedding day. But now, something is changing. Small things seem off. A flash of movement in the corner of her eye, elapsed moments that she can’t recall. Visions of a blonde girl in the darkness that only Marta can see. Perhaps she is starting to remember—or perhaps her mind is playing tricks on her. As Marta’s visions persist and her reality grows more disjointed, it’s unclear if the danger lies in the world around her, or in Marta herself. The girl is growing more real every day, and she wants something.

Wow…you definitely had a great week of reading. The most books I can every read in a week is one or two.

THANKS for stopping by my blog…I hope you get to read Necessary Lies.

I see you have The Book of Someday, The Returned, and Songs of Willow Frost for this upcoming month. I read them all, and they are really good. I hope you enjoy them. I want to read Thornwood House. Looking forward to your thoughts on all these books.

It’s tough to find a prom dress that’s nice and not slinky! I was shocked at the prom dresses a mom was letting her daughter try on while my sister was bridal gown shopping last year. The important bits were not very meaningfully covered. O_O Sounds like you navigated that well! Enjoy your week!